Wikipedia talk:Chile-related regional notice board

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[edit] Settlement naming convention

User:Jaxhere has proposed a Chile section to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). It needs some discussion or agreement from the regular editors of Chile city/town articles. The initial discussion was at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)#Chile, but would be better continued here, with a conclusion reported there. --Scott Davis Talk 13:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Clarification: When I say "cities/towns", I include all centres of population a.k.a. settlements, no matter how small, i.e. all of "ciudades, pueblos, aldeas and caseríos". My dialect of English has a legal definition for "city", and all are called "towns". For me, "village" is only a quaint tourism and real estate marketing term. Sorry for any confusion I inadvertently introduced. This naming convention is proposed to cover articles about any of them. --Scott Davis Talk 13:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On: Chile Settlement naming convention

User:ScottDavis has kindly contacted me and asked if I might be interested to read and comment on the proposed naming convention for articles about settlements in Chile. Certainly, I am interested in this issue and would like to seize the opportunity to comment here on a few points raised by previous wikipedia users.

[edit] What is a city and what is a town

The National Statistics Institute of Chile (INE - Chile) has divided Chilean settlements in four categories for its census reports [1]: ciudades, pueblos, aldeas and caseríos (roughly: cities, towns, villages and hamlets). Most ciudades, in this classification, have 5,000 inhabitants or more, while pueblos are usually in the 1,000 - 5,000 bracket; aldeas in the 300 - 1,000 one, and caseríos, at the bottom of the list. There are, though, some exceptions such as categorizing touristic settlements as ciudades, irrespective of their population. Also, small villages or hamlets belonging to a given comuna (municipality) but that have been engulfed by the urban sprawl of some adjacent city (located in a different comuna) have been labelled as ciudades, as well. This is the reason why some places of purely rural or outer suburban character have snaked their way and been listed as "cities" in the English language wikipedia, as have for instance such inconspicuous localities as Punta Diamante in the O'Higgins Region and Culenar and Villa Francia ("Talca absorption") in the Maule Region [2]. In my opinion, these lists should be amended as should the paragraph beginning with: "A city is defined by the National Statistics Institute as an urban entity possessing more than 5,000 inhabitants".

In the US, too, many incorporated areas which have a very modest population, have been designated as cities. The criteria used by the INE - Chile for the categorization of settlements may seem too arbitrary (or even amusing to those not familiar with the reduced scale of smaller countries) but provides a sound database for further work. Certainly, the discussion on what is a city and what is a town is a legitimate and time-honoured one and the English language wikipedia offers a comprehensive review of this topic ([3]).

IMHO, this matter should be treated with a good dose of common sense for the purposes of the Chile settlement naming convention. Perhaps the INE-Chile classification system can be used as a base, but its scale may have to be changed and the strictly census-related convention of designating incorporated or touristic hamlets as ciudades, dropped altogether. Surely, the traditional British custom of designating towns with a cathedral as cities does not apply here! Ultimately, there is a wide grey zone in-between the extremes of population where some degree of informality reigns and it does not really matter whether a settlement is called a town or a city.

I found your explanation of the different classifications quite illuminating, however, I think it is important to underline the following:

In the proposed naming convention there is no distinction made about whether the article is about a city, town, or anything else ... the key is that the article is about a settlement. In this we are not concerned with regions, provinces, municipalities, comunas or any other kind of administrative or political division, except in the rare instance where it is necessary to differentiate between two settlements which have the same name but which are located in different places within the country.

Jaxhere 23:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is a Comuna

A comuna (or municipio), in Chile, is the equivalent to the French commune, to the Italian comune or the Spanish municipio. The paragraph [4] provides a good starting point of this, rather uncomplicated matter of Administrative divisions in Chile. The regions are subdivided into provinces which are subdivided, in turn, into comunas. In Chile all settlements must exist within the territory of a comuna. In other words, there are no independent cities in the country as there are, for instance in the U.S. state of Virginia.

The great majority of Chilean comunas are named after their main settlement. There exist some exceptions due, for example, to some arrangement or compromise between competing towns (e.g. the comuna of Pelluhue whose seat is Curanipe) or to other, sometimes peculiar reasons (euphonical, as the case of the comuna of Río Claro, whose seat is the town of Cumpeo).

For this reason, it would not always be neccesary to list the name of the comuna and of its seat separately, unless in the exceptional instances when these are different [5]. However, it is requisite to describe the comuna and its homonym main settlement separately for purposes like demography [6] (the comuna usually encompasses rural entities) or geography.

In my opinion, it is not necessary to include the region -or the province- besides the name of the settlement in order to name articles about settlements in Chile. The name of the region and province are usually found in the opening paragraph of a wikipedia article (or should be, at least). See: [7] and [8] as examples.

I would concur with the proposal that, "in the rare case where there is more than one settlement with the same name, that article could be differentiated from the other by adding the name of the Province to the name of the article ie ([[City, Province, Chile]]").

Thank you for your extensive explanation of the term "comuna", however, even after spending various years in Chile I have been unable to find a clear official definition of the term. If you can provide a link to some site or other source where this is defined, I would personally be very interested.
In my experience I find that Municipality (municipio, or municipalidad in Spanish) is not always interchangeable with the term "comuna". Sometimes, from my observation, it is used as a term to define administrative areas for the SII or national tax authority, and may include all, or only part of a specific municipality. I'm not aware of any instances where more than one municipality is included. I'm inclined to think that it may be one of those flexible designations similiar to those you refer to in your discussion about towns, and cities. User:Jaxhere
Finally I've got a clear understanding of comuna/municipalidad as it relates to Chile. The information which had been included in several articles about Chile and above is incorrect according to the Chilean constitution which states, in summary:

Provinces are divided into comunas, which are administered by municipalities. A municipality may, according to article 118 administer a group of comunas.

In essence, the terms comuna and municipalidad cannot be used interchangeably, however, in practice they often are.
I've corrected this in a couple of articles where I've seen this misused, but I suspect that it may pop up in various places and I hope anyone who reads this will keep that distinction in mind inorder to correct these. --JAXHERE | Talk 13:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regions: Names vs numbers

The Chilean case is a peculiar one. Regions were numbered at the time of their creation for administrative (bureaucreatic) purposes, only, but many people use just the number, nowadays, as a shortcut for the longer name. However, for wikipedia purposes, I should think that the name of the region should take preeminence, since toponyms carry a historical and cultural meaning (with even some affective connotations - just think of a Texan being referred as "someone who lives in the 19th state"!) which cannot be arbitrarily displaced by an ordinal. Ideally, both: name and number should be used in the descriptive paragraphs of the article [9]. --User:EguiraldTalk22:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update to Regions

With the creation of two new regions a number of articles are needing updating to reflect the fact that there are now two new Regions (now numbering 15), their names, the new Provinces (I think the total is now 53) that have been created and also the possiblity that there may also be some new or renamed comunas, too (this I'm not entirely certain about).

As you come across the older information in various articles, also keep in mind the correct subdivision of provinces into comunas NOT municipalities (see the section about comunas, above). --JAXHERE | Talk 14:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The process is not complete. The law that create new regions will take effect in about six months. See es:Región de Los Ríos. Jespinos 20:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming convention confirmed

I have removed the "proposed" heading from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements)#Chile due to Jaxhere continuing to move a few articles per day with links to this page in the edit summaries ad receiving no opposition. Welcome to the countries with a consistent naming convention for your cities, towns, ciudades, pueblos, aldeas and caseríos. --Scott Davis Talk 22:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming convention modification

I've proposed this additional guideline because many English users are not accustomed to use accents when they are writing. It would be helpful for them if article names of Chilean places were redirected from an "English spelling" to the correct spelling in Spanish. As one administrator commented to me "re-directs are cheap", so we can use them to help users in their searches, but maintain the integrity of names by using the correct "official" spelling in the article names themselves. --JAXHERE | Talk 13:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Adding the requirements for redirects from common search terms is a minor change that won't get you into endless arguments - just do it. --Scott Davis Talk 21:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
OK, done. (I just hope I won't be chased by a lynch mob for this) --JAXHERE | Talk 16:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] re list of comunas

This article already exists at municipalities of Chile. Sorry. ☆ CieloEstrellado 03:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Municipalities and comunas are not the same, even though they are so similiar that most people confuse them. Both lists will serve a purpose, but perhaps they need to me expanded. For example, I could see the list of municipalities specifying the comuna(s) which it is responsible for administrating and, possibly the settlements which are run by the muni. An example I know of is that the Municipality of Villarrica, has the city of Villarrica, the town of Lican Ray, the village of Ñancul, and possibly several hamlets. These are all part of the comuna of Villarrica, but it is a mistake to say that the commune is the same. --JAXHERE | Talk 14:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
It would be totally anal (for lack of a better word) to have two pages with the same list. We can have the list at Municipalities of Chile, while stressing the difference between comuna and municipalidad in the article, which I have already sort of done, but could be improved. The fact of the matter is that the terms comuna and municipalidad can both be translated in English as "municipality", we have to cope with that. ☆ CieloEstrellado 23:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Please avoid supporting your opinion with little more than near-profanity, it's not necessary and reflects badly on you.
The difference between the comuna (which translates to English as commune) was not clear in the article Municipalities of Chile when you removed List of comunas in Chile and redirected it there. I was the one who clarified the distinction which, frankly, is misunderstood quite widely in what I've observed in Chile, but it is available for anyone to see in the Constitution of Chile and documents from the National Stastics Institute (if you understand Spanish)(be certain, however, that you refer to the latest version -- the original has changed in regards to this topic). While it is an inconvenience to have two similar lists from the point of view of making and maintaining them, in the electronic world of Wikipedia, it doesn't do any harm and may actually help outsiders (of Chile) in understanding some of the idiosycrancies of the country, especially if there are links between the pertinent parts of the theme to other realted articles, lists, and categories. As I explained in my direct answer to your talk page, we could probably do readers a great service by expanding on the explanations and relationships between individual communes, municipalities and cities, towns or villages which are inter-related but which carry similiar or slightly different names.
In the end, if you don't like the other list, just ignore it. We're not going to increase your cost of using Wikipedia because of this extra inclusion. JAXHERE | Talk 15:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who's interested I've provided a sample of they way the additional information to Chile's Municipalities might be presented on the page and have also placed an explanation at Talk:Municipalities of Chile JAXHERE | Talk 13:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I voice my opposition to the Chilean city naming convention

I disagree wholeheartedly with the Settlement, Chile policy for all Chilean cities. This should only be used when there are similarly named articles. As far as I know this would be equal to original research, as nobody refers to Chilean cities as Settlement, Chile; except Santiago, Chile; which comes from the capital's original name in Spanish: Santiago de Chile. Please revert the policy's status to "proposed". By the way, it's pretty easy to create policies and not get any oposition when nobody's paying attention. I had no idea this page existed until I supposedly "violated" this policy. ☆ CieloEstrellado 23:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

It was proposed for over two weeks with attempts to contact affected editors by several different means including direct user talk pages where identified, moving a few articles a day with edit summaries pointing to the proposal to catch people with articles on their watchlists, notices on this page and on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) and its talk page. Admittedly the period was over Christmas and New Year, but I notice you edited Wikipedia nearly every day over that period and since, and have only just decided to voice an opinion. It appears to be almost 2 weeks since the last of the articles were moved to fit the convention. What more do you think Jaxhere could or should have done? --Scott Davis Talk 11:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not necessarily opposed to a change in the convention but I would want to hear some reasonable and logical arguments to support such a change ... not as the objector has put on my talk page that the policy is "absurd" and nothing more.
Regardless of what approach we adopt, it is an aid to the orderly presentation of Wikipedia to have some standard way of doing certain things, just as we agree that the letter "A" comes before the letter "B" in the alphabet, or that people's family name (in Western usage), follow the given name.
What is absurd is what I discovered when I undertook to move all non-conforming names into line with the standard after it was adopted. I found (examples):
  • Laraquete - just a place name
  • Colonia Dignidad - an existing community where the name has changed to Villa Baviera
  • San Miguel (municipality)
  • Providencia (municipality, Chile)
  • Maule (Chile)
  • Valdivia (city)
  • City, Chile appeared to be the most frequently used to start with.
These are single examples of each type of variation, most were repeated and there may have been other subtle variations. In some cases there were disambiguation pages with names in other countries or other meanings which would not have been necessary if the standard had been applied in naming the article.
I think it is also important to underscore that the "XXX, Chile" scheme seemed to predominate and was chosen for that reason, together with the fact that the comma convention is the favored one in the guidelines as a whole.
As Scott pointed out at some point, redirects are cheap, and if we're concerned about making it easy for searchers to find a topic we can use them to include multiple variations of spelling, variations of puncuation and symbols, etc, if they are helpful (and which I have attempted to do whenever I've become aware of them.)
In case it is a concern in writing an article and making it look cumbersum by always including ", Chile" together with a place name, there are ways to use just the name alone -- even in a link to improve appearance. Eg. [[Santiago, Chile|]] will produce Santiago.
It is my hope that maybe the Chilean modle, rather than following the disorganized example shown in the heated arguments which rage about names in other countries, might serve as an example to eventually become adopted for universal use. It may be subject to some modifications before it ever becomes wide spread, but I'd hope that we can provide a bit of commonsense leadership to the rest of the world instead of copying their bickering and infighting. JAXHERE | Talk 15:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I definitely support this argument, the suffix ", Chile" is just needed for disambiguation purposes and should not be the defacto naming standard for all places in our country. Otherwise it could even be claimed to be some kind of discrimination.

By the way I'm going to take care of the "Cerro Castillo" issue, adding the two missing places (the Cerro Castillo in Diadema Peninsula, by Skyring Sound and, the Cerro Castillo village by Torres del Paine) Kilroytech 14:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome Kilroytech. Could you please explain what you mean by "...some kind of discrimination"? This naming convention was widely notified to interested parties when it was proposed. If there appears to be a move by multiple authors to consider changing it, please raise it both here and at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements). The main point is to have a consistent naming convention so that arguments about the names of individual pages can be avoided, focusing on the content instead. --Scott Davis Talk 23:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maps of communities

I've recently noticed that many communities have maps showing their location within a region such as in Teno. This particular type of map is showing the location of the comuna, which is an administrative area that contains the city, town or other settlement which may have the same name. In the interests of accuracy, please indicate in the caption of these maps that it is the comuna which is being located as opposed to simply putting in the place name. For example instead of:

Map of Teno in the Maule Region of Chile

it would be better to use:

Map showing the location of Teno comuna within the Maule Region.

Notice the re-wording of the caption to make it more clear that the image is showing the Region with the highlighted part being the comuna in question.

If you notice the former version in any caption in other communities, please update it.--JAXHERE | Talk 15:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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